Everyone–well, almost everyone–seems to think that pre-K is a great idea that will help children develop vocabulary and learn the social skills to prepare for kindergarten.
But, wait! Who knew that Race to the Top, round 2, included funding for pre-K testing?
Jason Stanford, intrepid Texas journalist, noticed that Sandy Kress registered to lobby for Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify, the big for-profit run by Joel Klein (and joined recently by ex-New Jersey Commissioner Chris Cerf).
Kress was the architect of No Child Left Behind and lobbies in Texas for Pearson. He persuaded the Texas legislature to commit nearly $500 million to Pearson for a five-year contract (a five-year contract in New York with Pearson cost “only” $32 million; Texas must get all the best questions and answers).
But the new big-bucks frontier is pre-K assessment.
Stanford writes:
“Making a 4-year-old take a high-stakes test at an age when it’s hard to make them take a nap sounds like heaping child abuse on top of a failed educational theory. But at least we can all rest assured that Kress has figured out a way to get his cut of the early-education bonanza. It’s time we saw schools as a place to create opportunities for children, not profiteers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here is a link to Mr. Stanford’s article: http://www.gazettextra.com/article/20140217/ARTICLES/140219722/1034
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/the-american-public-schoo_b_4804416.html
Hey everyone, read this article. It sums up everything we despise about the Obama and the USDOE.
Well fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. It is so sickening that it is all about the money. All that President Obama and his crew has done was about making money for wall street and the billionaires ruining public education.
I will read the article later…after a long walk …as the headlines alone have created a feeling of hopelessness in this fight for more learning and less testing.
I can not absorb such an article without thinking that all that we have worked for in this field has just …as they say..”Gone to Pot”
This is why I have been against pre-K. We have state-funded pre-K for the underprivileged in our state. Even the “good” ones require too much “traditional” education for a four year-old. They are sitting still doing flashcards, being quiet in the halls, and being forced to behave like school-age kids. And honestly, any “advantage” there may be when they enter kindergarten is long gone by third grade. So really how does adding another layer of over-regulated junk help?
When are we going to Let kids be kids….???
The need to learn so much more than any standardize test is capable of measuring..
OMG..this is so sad.
Someone is after the Green.$$$$$$..again..
This is sick…..and the people in Washington are allowing this to happen! Libertarian is the only way to vote now!
The only appropriate developing practice they seek lies in financial packages and investment schemes.
If you follow the link in the piece and scroll down it looks like he’s also registered to lobby for TFA.
Teach For America
315 West 36th Street, 7th Floor New York, NY 10018
Type of Compensation: Prospective
$10,000 – $24,999.99
Client Start Date: 02/05/2014
Client Term Date: 12/31/2014
Here’s the lobbyist registry list I looked at, from the piece:
http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/tedd/lobcon2014c.htm
I’ve been saying this would happen ever since Duncan made the false claim that PreK was not going to be about testing. I knew he was lying for several reasons:
Duncan knew the RttT -Early Learning Challenge requires that states coordinate their efforts between different Early Childhood agencies and departments, just like Duncan has been coordinating efforts with Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services. That department administers Head Start (for ages 3-5) and Early Head Start (for ages 0 – 3), and they’ve been testing kids ever since that was first mandated, at the beginning of the NCLB era.
Also, Duncan was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) during that same time and he worked closely with Barbara Bowman, who administered the Early Childhood Department there (and is the mother of Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President), so he would have known then that CPS serves kids as young as 3 years old in Head Start and that each child in that program is tested.
Fewer kids are served in Early Head Start due to limited funding, but the law requires “ongoing assessment of every child in Head Start and Early Head Start,” so children may be tested from BIRTH: http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/tta-system/teaching/eecd/assessment/screening/screeningandass.htm
Pants on fire, Duncan –AND Obama!
Universal preschool tests for tots!
Numerology in the nursery!
I agree with neanderthal. I have to stay away from this blog for awhile. I appreciate what Dr. Ravitch is doing, but many of us (still “trying” to teach) are going to have heart attacks getting upset about things we have absolutely no control over. Yes, public school is done and no, we don’t live in a functioning Democracy anymore. We all know these things on some level. It is “cute” and “quaint” to think that writing a letter to a politician will change anything or that your vote matters. If you aren’t a billionaire, just go watch Netflix and escape. If you watch “House of Cards,” you get a rough idea of how the game is played.
On a positive note, there are some great TV shows out there: “Homeland”, “Dexter”, “House of Cards”, and “The Fall” and “Wallander”from BBC. Lots of ways to zone out. I also like reading about life in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. I find that I can relate to those people much better than I could even ten years ago. Very interesting stuff!
I completely relate to the anger and frustration, but there’s a lot more that we can do than contact insensitive politicians.
As I said on the page about grit and Alfie Kohn today, now our task is to inform everyone. We need to spread the word that control of the message and policies by the privileged is a matter of class warfare that is being waged by elites against lower income and middle income working class people, regardless of the civil rights lingo & euphemisms they use as smoke screens to mask their true intentions.
Use social media to spread the truth and encourage civil disobedience. Participate in tonight’s campaign, sponsored by the Students United for Public Education (@supenational), which is intended to storm Twitter with #ResistTFA tweets, aimed at college students who are contemplating joining an organization that seeks to replace veteran career teachers with 5 week trained new graduates committed to teach for only two years in schools with our neediest children.
This is happening on Twitter right now!! Join in!
Good idea. Let’s just all go rewatch Breaking Bad while the Nazis take over our preschools.
@ Mike:
Three quick points:
1. never underestimate what one person can do.
2. In a democratic republic, we get the government we elect.
3. Public schools were created to nurture democratic citizenship. We’ve strayed far from that critical mission, and the vast majority of “reformers” don’t want anything to do with it.
GAGAer, through and through art thou, Mike!
(Either that or my sarcasmometer needs adjusting.)
Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution upon their passing from this realm.
Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
I love this blog but agree that we also need to think about putting our energy into these meaningful discussions and going beyond that. I’m not even sure what that means. I looked at the lobby blog – drug companies like Lilly pay $199,000 lobby – how can a normal person like any of us compete with that? the influence of money in not only education decisions but any decisions made in Washington is scary. I think we need to do all we can to spread the word – democracy is not what our country is based on anymore. The rich and powerful are funning the show.
That’s exactly what I am saying. What good is spreading the word in this kind of situation? You have to be realistic. I know some people want to believe in a happy outcome. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s going to get a lot worse than this. So yes, watch “Breaking Bad” or read Shakespeare and become an artist. Don’t let the system you live in define you. There were plenty of great, intellectual people trapped in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany as well. What happened to people who spoke up in those systems? Think long and hard about that. History is cyclical, and this is our time! Try to ride it out as best you can, and maybe in hundred years things will get better, but I kind of doubt it. We’re on the downward slope….
Oppressed people did not have ways to readily unite through social media, as we do today.
If teenagers can exploit this very powerful tool by using it to organize destructive flash mobs, mature adults can use it for promoting the common good!
No, my sarcasmometer doesn’t need adjusting.
Please follow through with your candied thought of leaving the blog. No need for GAGAers on this site.
From the alphabet of The New England Primer, the first textbook ever published on these shores:
The idle fool
Is whip’d in school.
The education deformers are traditionalists. They want us to return to that vision for U.S. education. Back to the future–I mean, way, way, way back.
Education deform is child abuse. People who collaborate with these deforms are child abusers. Let’s call this what it is.
Great piece, Jason!
I have been telling all the teachers at my school that this is the plan for Pre-K for months. Still I am sad to see that I was right. Sigh. Cry.
Here is an idea that could actually work. Find out who the billionaires are in this country and reach out to them. They are the only ones with the kind of resources available to counter all this other propaganda. That is your only hope. It doesn’t matter how many poor serfs (proles) you contact. It just doesn’t. It’s all about money, so focus on rich people who may want to save public schools or who went to public schools themselves. That is probably the only chance left. This is what Ralph Nader said ten years ago. The only hope is to find a benevolent billionaire or two. Good luck!
I have written to every TFA corporate sponsor, wrote a lengthy letter to Bill Gates and Arne Duncan. We have to keep bothering them, threaten not to buy their products, tell politicians running for re-election we won’t vote for them. They may not care about young children but they obviously care about what is good for them.
Decades of apathy contributed to our landing here. There’s no single magic bullet for getting us out. We have to launch broadly-based resistance, before it all escalates to violent rebellions.
@Cosmic:
The top education organizations, from ASCD to the American Association of School Superintendents, from the NEA and AFT, from the National Association of Elementary School Principals to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, have been or are now complicit.
The “leaders” of these groups have been derelict in their duties and obligations to public education.
Yes, democracy, you are right. I didn’t intend to blame the victims. So many people are culpable in this hoax. I discontinued my membership to ASCD. Maybe those in unions and other organizations can vote more conscientious and representative candidates into leadership positions.
Twenty three at the most.
Child abuse.
Why do you think the Race to the Top application required every state to create a P-20 longitudinal data collection system? The P has always stood for Pre-K since 2009 when Arne invented his diabolical scheme.
New York is in trouble because we are the only state that I know of that is still pushing forward with the plan to collect data on every child in the state and store it with inBloom, controlled by Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein. There is no opt out available for anyone. The lawsuit that the parents brought against NY State and John King was dismissed last month. And every Pre-K child that gets registered will be in the system for life.
It’s telling that Sandy Kress was a top education advisor to George W, Bush. But what else would we have expected? Bush surrounded himself with dogmatists and sloppy thinkers of all stripes: Karl Rove, Don Rumsfeld, Condaleezza Rice, Hank Paulson…Dick Cheney. (Besides two botched and unpaid-for wars, the Bushies unleashed on the nation a second – more vigorous – round of supply-side economic folly that nearly tore down the economy.)
Sandy Kress pushed hard for No Child Left Behind and its 100 percent proficiency requirement by 2014.
Prominent researchers – an educators who used an ounce of thought – said the 100 percent requirement was both unrealistic and unattainable. Sandy Kress said “The bar was not set too high. Indeed, some would argue that it was set too low.” (Psst. Sandy, it’s hard to get MORE than 100 percent.)
Educators who grasped the pitfalls and punitive effects of high-stakes testing warned that NCLB would narrow the curriculum to focus on what was tested. Kress said“Curricula only narrow when poor teachers and/or administrators allow that to happen. It’s pathetic. Poor practitioners do this and then blame it on NCLB.”
In a very real sense, NCLB shifted the political cause –– and blame –– for the far-reaching effects of Bushonomics –– increased poverty, expanded income disparity and job losses–– onto the nation’s public schools.
“Reformers” like Sandy Kress are still at it. The “new” improved version of NCLB is Race to the Top (and Common Core). Groups like the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are avid supporters. They were behind the failed Bush policies “100 percent.” Now, as they lobby for more of the same horribly bad medicine, they try to scapegoat public schooling for what they did.
For conservatives, this is business as usual. Obama should know better.
It’s up to those who care about public education and the general welfare of the nation to remind him. And that clearly does not happen by taking money from Bill Gates, or by endorsing the Common Core.
Follow the federal and state grants since 2002 that have been awarded to the UT-System and one of its favorite corporations – Wireless Generation (now Amplify) for the development of commercialized “intellectual property” in the form of “progress monitoring” of early literacy.
The Amplify/Wireless Generation assessments are viewed by the profiteers as corporate/UT-System cash cows.
Lobbyists like Sandy Kress work with certain legislators to write corporate interests into federal and state education law for the benefit of Amplify and the UT entrepreneurs who developed the intellectual property and now receive royalties from Amplify/Wireless Generation for the software sold on the testing devices.
The federal probe into Reading First formerly known as the Texas Reading Initiative was a whitewash and Wireless Generation escaped scrutiny.
Educators who “monitor progress” with Amplify’s mClass, CPALLS, and the TPRI using a device are serving the financial interests of Rupert Murdoch, Sandy Kress, Joel Klein and the developers of the intellectual property who received the federal and state grants.
As Chicago’s CEO, Duncan funneled millions in tax funds to Wireless Generation.
Readers need to be informed about Amplify’s current role in the Common Core boondoggle.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/marketplacek12/2013/03/amplify_insight_wins_contract_from_common_core_testing_consortium.html?qs=wireless+generation
Just like the Nazi…..first they indoctrinate your children with brainwashing…
Amplify/Wireless Generation is part of the enmeshed political lobbying corruption taking over Austin, UT, and Texas. It is the Texas Political Mafia at work maintaining ” white power” in the big bullying state! Why is there no Outrage?
The Office of Technology Management at UT Houston (UTHSC-H) serves at the distributor of Wireless Generation/Amplify royalties to the Texas Education Agency (TEA), UT System, University of Houston, a host of individuals who are employees or former employees of the UT System and other individuals who are employees or former employees of the University of Houston. Also, there’s a significant flow of WG/Amplify royalty funds back to UTHSC-H.
There’s NO financial disclosure since the universities, the TEA and the individuals are under the protection of the UT Regents and Bruce Butler who handles the technology transfer activities at UTHSC-H. There’s outrage in the state, but certain editorial boards and certain legislators in addition to the Regents protect the UT-System’s financial interests so indirectly or directly the financial interests of Rupert Murdoch are protected.
Follow the money to Wireless Generation – mClass, CPALLS, the TPRI, etc. with the number of child licenses sold in Texas and across the US. Many of the WG licenses in Texas are buy backs purchased by UTHSC-H from Wireless Generation and then foisted on school districts through grant funds. Follow the UTHSC-H Legislative Budget Board (LBB) records.
Read the copyright and software descriptions at the UTHSC-H website and all information available related to Susan Landry’s CIRCLE also known as the Children’s Learning Institute housed at the UTHSC-H Medical School.
I’m outraged by reading open records requests revealing the names of the UT entrepreneurs who get the kickbacks (royalties) without financial disclosure from Wireless Generation and other corporations that do the UT-System’s bidding. There’s more outrage related to how the UT employees bully public school officials into implementing UT’s commercialized intellectual property into thousands of classrooms.
A book could be written about how the Texas Legislature and Governor Perry funneled millions to Wireless Generation through state grants that were managed by the UT-System. Supporters like Sandy Kress and Beth Ann Bryan emerge as key players linked to US universities that serve the plutocrats as they all work together to pillage the US public school system.
http://www.uth.tmc.edu/otm/for-inventors/roalty-sharing-policy.html
“Pursuant to The University of Texas Intellectual Property Policy (Policy 201), and after certain costs of licensing and patenting are recaptured (i.e. outside patenting costs), UTHealth divides any remaining royalty income as follows:
50% Creator(s)
5% Lab of Creator(s)
5% School of Creator(s)
5% Department of Creator(s)
35% Office of Technology Management”
YUP. I learned about this back in October, when I discovered that Cuomo had applied for yet more RTTT money. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2013/10/sixteen_states_plus_dc_vie_for.html